


The Red Room

by Anonymous



Category: Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015)
Genre: Emotional and physical abuse/manipulation/torture, Established Relationship, Explicit Torture, M/M, Read at Your Own Risk, this is not for the faint of heart, this is really just a torture fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 17:54:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16330823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Hernan is sent on a search and rescue mission, but ends up trapped in what is called the Red Room. No one leaves the Red Room alive, not even him.(please heed the warnings - written for whumptober day 14: Torture)





	The Red Room

They called it the red room. Hernan had scoffed the first time he had heard of it.

“You mean like the deep web?”

“Yes,” Waller replied. “It exists.”

“Well, I don’t usually admit weaknesses, but I’m not really a tech wizard.”

“I don’t need you to hack anything, Superman. I need you to find someone.”

“Just one person?”

“A group,” Waller clarified. “They were a covert team of one of my finest sent to investigate the Red Room. That was a week ago.”

“Very well. Give me the coordinates, and I’ll find them.”

Waller placed the coordinates on screen, and Hernan memorized them in a second.

“What would you have me do, once I find them?”

“Bring them back home.”

“And if I should find some resistance?”

“You know what to do.”

Hernan looked mildly surprised, but he nodded all the same. “Madame President.”

He bowed his head and left immediately. It was a simple search and rescue mission, nothing more. Ever since Bekka left, him and Kirk have been spread thinly. Hernan took more orders from Waller by himself, as Kirk tried to deal with more local matters. Divide and conquer as it were.

Hernan reached the location easily, but there was nothing there. There was no one around. Was it underground?

Hernan scanned the location several times. It wasn’t until he flew miles away, within a thousand-mile radius did he find signs of life. It was faint, but there was someone there. He landed on the ground in what seemed like the middle of nowhere in the woods.

There on the ground laid a man. His face was one Hernan recognized from the files. His legs were contorted unnaturally and his body crusted with dried blood. He was slowly dying.

“Tell me, where are the others?”

“R-Red…”

“In the Red Room?”

The man coughed as he struggled to nod.

“Where?”

With a pained groan, he pointed in a direction. Hernan looked but all he could see were rocky mountains. When he looked back at the man, he was dead.

Hernan cursed under his breath, but there was no time to pause. He had to go if he had any chance of saving the others. He flew in the direction of the mountains, and scanned the forest floor.

Then he heard it. There was a heartbeat down below. He flew lower and found the opening of a cave. With his enhanced sight, he could see deep at the end of the tunnel was a door. This must be it.

He walked through finding himself at a long hallway that lead to a large metal door. The smell of rotting flesh was pungent to his nose, but he heard faint heartbeats just on the other side. They were dying.

He pushed the door to the side and there littered several bodies struggling to breathe.

The door clicked behind him sealing shut, and a faint hum buzzed through the room. Hernan could feel heat begin to warm his skin. He looked up at the ceiling where several lights came to life.

They were red…

He heard it before he felt it.

A shot.

The bullet struck his shoulder. It didn’t pierce through his body but it bruised. He was weakening. Those lights. They were red solar radiation.

One after another, more bullets were fired from openings in the walls of the room. Hernan shielded his face with his arm as the bullets were rebuffed from his impenetrable skin until they didn’t any more.

It pierced through.

He swallowed down the cry that threatened to break free.

 _‘Carajo!’_ “Cowards! You shot at me through a wall rather than wield the gun yourselves.”

“Not cowards, Superman.”

Hernan turned to face the perpetrator, but before he could see them fully, a final shot was fired.

“Just practical.”

Hernan fell to his knees. Pain seared within his chest as he clutched his frantic heart. The taste of copper filled his mouth and red dripped from his lips.

“Kryptonian blood, red like ours. How fascinating.” the man’s gloved hand reached for Hernan’s jaw but Hernan was quick to flinch away. The price was a shuttering pain against his ribs, but it was a price Hernan paid gladly.

“You’ve got a lot of fight in you. I was hoping for that.” Hernan felt his head forcefully whipped back, and his jaw bruised from the back of a coward’s hand.

The barrel of a gun was shoved against his shoulder atop of the first of many bruises that littered his body. Hernan bit back the pain. His bloodied hands were too weak to push the weapon away.

It fired.

“Welcome to the Red Room, Superman.” the man laughed as he towered over Hernan’s fallen form. “I do hope you enjoy your stay indefinitely for no one ever leaves alive.”

 

* * *

 

He had called it the Red Room. Hernan had thought it was for lack of imagination, but the gloved hand gripped his jaw. Eyes hidden behind dark shades fixed upon his shackled form. However, Hernan didn’t need to see his eyes to know the man was amused. The tug upon his thin lips said as much.

“Do you see those lights, Superman?”

Hernan looked up. He could still feel the faint warmth upon his skin, and hear the droning buzz echo through the room.

The lights were red.

His eyes narrowed back at the person before him.

“What… do you… want?” Hernan gritted between clenched teeth.

“Why to merely appease my curiosity, Superman, or should I say Hernan. Can I call you Hernan?”

“No.”

“Well Hernan, I know a great deal about you. I’ve watched you very carefully over the years, and that’s a long time, so you can imagine I have quite a few questions.”

“You’re insane.”

A high-pitched laugh bubbled from his throat as he shook his head. Not mockingly so, but it was fidgety, anxious.

“No, no, Hernan. I’m certifiably sane, or at least, before I saw you.”

“You want… a fucking… autograph?”

The gloved fingers reached over to Hernan’s shoulder, and dug into the bullet wound.

Hernan had made a sound he had never heard before. It was him. It came from him.

“I don’t like cursing, Hernan,” the man spoke calmly as he wiggled his pointer finger in the flesh wound.

“Hijo de puta!”

The finger twisted up to the first knuckle and something in Hernan nearly broke. His lungs wheezed through the overwhelming rush coursing through his body that screamed.

“Please, don’t make me sew that mouth of yours shut so soon.”

For the first time, Hernan felt his core shiver cold, yet the rest of him burned like fire.

“I’ll let you rest. We’ll talk later.” a perky smile streaked upon his lips as he removed his finger and wiped it on a white apron. Hernan watched with labored breaths his blood staining the cloth. The first of many stains he dreaded to think.

As soon as the doors closed, Hernan weakly struggled in his binds. With each movement he made, his body protested in anguish.

He was too weak. He was too wounded. His blood oozed from his bindings as he realized his clothes had been removed. He was left in a pair of elastic shorts that were not his, and wrappings of gauze around his torso and forearm where the bullets had struck. The only wound left bare was his shoulder.

 _‘Mierda!’_ He needed to get out of there. He needed to escape, but how? How?

 _‘Kirk…’_ No. He couldn’t come here. Hernan didn’t want him here. If this lunatic had planned for Hernan’s arrival then there was no knowing what he had planned for Kirk. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t imagine it.

He needed to do this on his own. He would find a way. He had to… Somehow.

But the hours drew by and before he knew it, he had passed out. When he was awoken again, he was strapped to a cold, metal table. Cheerful muttering could be heard beside him, but Hernan found no joy in himself.

“Ah, you’re awake. Perfect, let’s begin.”

He started with the ripping of Hernan’s toenails, and cutting the webbing between the toes, before he moved to the hand to do the same. Hernan had bled, as his limbs trembled, but no words had passed him. Nothing comprehensible at least.

He had then moved to bend his fingers back in unnatural ways. Hernan heard them snap, but most of all he felt the tendons rip.

“This is all extremely painful. I’m surprised you have not said anything yet, but then again, you were always strong, Hernan, weren’t you? Always needed to be.”

Hernan focused on breathing through his nose.

Gloved fingers came to caress his ring finger, rubbing the second knuckle pensively.

“You always needed to be strong for _him_. How broken you found him, shivering cold, and lifeless.”

Hernan stilled.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know?” the smile elongated. “The ring you keep in your pocket. Tell me, does he have one too?”

Hernan struggled against his binds. If he had his powers, he would have burned a hole through the man’s head, but his futile efforts only drew uproarious laughter from him.

He snapped the finger all the same.

“I wonder, how fun it would be if I just cut this off. Oh, not that much! Maybe up to the first knuckle? I thought of it. I wondered if it would grow back. Then I could feed them to you, or perhaps send them to him. He would like them, wouldn’t he? Or your sister.”

Hernan was enraged. He wanted to kill this man. He had wanted to splatter the walls with him. He had been angry before, even furious, b

ut never before he had felt such bitter rancor – a homicidal rush to see someone’s blood on his hands.

“You had to be strong for her too. After all, you broke her. It was your fault. She knew it. Your mother and father knew it – is that why you left? You couldn’t deal with the shame? You couldn’t handle their silent resentment for you?”

The last of his finger was snapped. His hands shook. His fingers were distorted, purpled, and swollen. He could hardly feel them but only a numbing tingle that spiked in pain with every small tremor.

Hernan’s ribs were next. One by one were broken at different parts, but the way he did them was methodical. He didn’t apply enough force for the bones to splinter through the skin nor his organs. He merely meant for them to crack.

Hernan was winded. He could barely breathe, and though he had cried earlier, he didn’t hear himself scream until he felt a knife slowly peeling away the skin from his arm.

This was it. This was how he went, but when he was met with darkness, his eyes opened to red once more.

He felt his fingers move sorely and the faint warmth from the red radiated lights from above against his skin. Was it a bad dream? No, that pain. That pain was impossible for him to imagine on his own. It had to be real.

“All healed up again, I see.” the man spread out more tools than he had the day before, and dread once more filled Hernan to the core. The torture started all over again. Day after day, the man would torture him until he passed out, then switch on solar lights for Hernan to heal, before turning the room red once more.

“We can’t let this end so soon,” he had told Hernan. “Killing you would be easy, but breaking you – a god, now that is much more interesting.”

“Then you might as well kill me now,” Hernan replied. “For it’s the most enjoyment you’re going to get from me.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Like the vulture to Prometheus, he started his torture all over again. Hernan thought he’d get used to the pain, but he never did. Each day hurt as much as the last, but the words he threw at him – the comments he made were different – more troubling than before.

“I saw him today, out in the town nearby. He’s looking for you,” the man said. “He looked tired, weak. He looked near ready for me to take him.”

“Tired of me already?” Hernan threw back at him. It was the only thing he could do at the moment. No matter how much he struggled in his binds, they would not break.

He laughed. “Are you being self-sacrificing, Hernan? No, I could never tire of you, but I have always planned on taking him too. Such red eyes. You have seen them cry, but I wish to see them well up. I want to see the tears slowly build before water tension gives way and they slide down that pretty, pale face. Or at least, I imagined he’s a slow crier. Is he a slow crier?”

“Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Him.”

“It’s not nice to be selfish, Hernan. Want me to show you what I was going to do to him?”

Hernan felt the straps give way but his chained wrists were not connected to the table. They were connected to the ceiling as Hernan felt himself raised higher as the table lowered into the floor.

His wrists were bound together above his head and he hung like a piece of meat. Hernan heard metal scrape across the floor, and his heart spiked with each clank.

 _‘Stay strong,’_ he told himself. _‘He’s not going to catch Kirk. He can’t.’_

The metal swung, earning a hoarse cry from Hernan.

“Cat o’ Nine Tails. I made the ends hooked to really dig into the skin,” he explained from behind Hernan’s back. Before Hernan could have a moment to recompose himself, the whip was brought upon his back once more. Again and again, it cut through his skin. It dug up the tendons, the muscles until his back had looked like it had been through a grinder.

No… Kirk could never come here.

He could never…

Hernan was left hanging in the dark.

 

A scream jolted him awake. The room was pitch black, and he could still feel parts of his flesh just barely hanging onto his back. The yellow lights were not turned on. He had not healed. Rather every labored breath he took sent radiating agony down his spine.

The scream came again. There was a choked off sob – a cry Hernan felt all too familiar with.

_‘No. It’s not him.’_

The scream came again.

‘ _It can’t be.’_

He could hear the sound of the hooked tails hurling through the air before striking the flesh. The victim choked on their sobs and Hernan found himself choking too. He gasped for air for the pain he felt ripple through him. Just hearing each strike made him feel as if it were his back being ripped open again.

That voice. No… no, it wasn’t Kirk’s. It sounded like him, but Hernan knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t. He …

Hernan tried to peer through the dark. He no longer had his night vision, but his eyes could perhaps make out a shape.

Nothing. The doors were closed, and yet he could still hear every scream, every land of the whip as if they were in the room with him.

Perhaps he didn’t get Kirk. Perhaps that sicko got someone else to appease his blood thirst. Nonetheless, Hernan didn’t feel any better listening to their cries.

This man… he was just a man. He walked the streets without anyone giving him a second look, and yet behind closed doors he was capable of this. It was not Hernan who was the monster, he who was not human, but it was this man… this man who looked like anyone else and perhaps that was the scariest thing in the room.

 

The monster came again the next day. However, this time, he did not greet Hernan with a smile. He did not even say a word. He merely picked up his whip, and slashed at Hernan’s back once more.

The skin had not had enough light to fully heal. Hernan didn’t know if that made the pain any less or worse than before. It still shook his body, and his fingers bled against the chains for how tightly he held onto them.

He did not know for how long it went, but when it was done, the man left his bloodied whip on the side table, before kneeling in front of Hernan’s broken body.

“I apologize for being out of sorts today.”

Hernan was in too much pain, he couldn’t form words.

“You see… I tried to get your Kirk for you the other night, but he… he didn’t come as planned. He’s… let’s just say, I wasn’t happy whipping that boy last night in his place. I would have preferred that little monster instead. Now I won’t ever get to. He’s gone.”

Hernan froze. He no longer focused on his breathing – he didn’t even know if he was breathing at all, but he felt his heart sink. It stilled and dropped like stone – cold and unfeeling.

“At least I still have you, Hernan, huh?” that smile Hernan had dreamed of melting from his face since the first day he spent in here, crawled upon those lips, but Hernan… the anger was gone. The rage... everything.

What was left to feel?

What was left to do?

If Kirk was gone, there was nothing left for Hernan to return to.

The man left him alone again, hanging in the dark.

 

_‘Hernan.’_

He felt a hand against his face. Though the touch was faint, the fingers were cool.

_‘Hernan.’_

He knew that voice. He knew that touch. Still, he refused to open his eyes in fear of seeing nothing.

There was nothing.

 _‘Hernan…’_ the voice still lingered in his ear like a ghost of the past. ‘ _You left me.’_

The clawed tails whipped against his back, and the day started over again as it did the last. Except this time, Hernan hardly felt the pain.

“What’s this?” the whipping suddenly stopped. Hernan heard his footsteps come to stand before him. “Have I finally broken you?”

Hernan said nothing.

“Pity. Too easy really.” he clicked his tongue reproachfully. “Did he really mean that much to you?”

Still Hernan didn’t say a word.

“What about your sister? Your nephew? Or do you already know how much better off they’d be without you?” the smile returned to the man’s features.

Hernan wanted to say he knew his sister would miss him, but another part of him thought the man was right. He… what good would he be to her if he escaped like this? What good could he be for anyone after this?

He had nothing. He did not know how many days had passed since he last felt a semblance of his powers. He knew he healed overnight under lights, but it was his bones, his skin… nothing else returned. Nothing more than flesh, but the wounds ran much deeper than that.

He was broken.

“You’re not broken yet, Hernan,” the man said as if he could hear Hernan’s thoughts. “I still have so much left for you to learn. For example,” he moved behind Hernan once more, and grabbed something heavy Hernan couldn’t see.

It came faster than Hernan had anticipated as it ripped another part from him. It was not just his voice that was stolen, but something else. Something Hernan always thought he had a grasp on, but for the first time in decades, he felt it slip from his fingers.

He lost himself.

“The last straw to break the Superman’s back – or I suppose in this case a hammer.” the man laughed to himself before gloved hands dug into Hernan’s scalp and forced his head back in an unnatural angle. “How does it feel to have your back broken? Tell me, did your sister cry as you are now?”

Hernan had thought he was too dehydrated to produce more tears, but they rolled down his cheeks and collected at his jaw. The overwhelming flow flooded them down his neck to stain the scalpel pressed against his throat.

 _‘Do it.’_ Hernan prayed. _‘Just do it.’_

“When one has the power over life and death, he truly becomes a god. You once had that power; now it’s mine.”

 Hernan was released altogether. The scalpel was removed from his throat, leaving only a nick behind. But Hernan was left with so much more and yet nothing at all.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” the man left with a giddiness in his step, and Hernan remained hanging in the dark.

 

Again, that night, Hernan heard the voice call to him. “Hernan…”

His fingers twitched in their bindings. An old familiar feeling tingled within them.

“H-Hernan.”

Hernan could see yellow behind his closed eyes. The buzz was gone. There was no more red, only white light.

Something moved to undue his chains, and his wrists were freed. He felt his weight plummet, but hands were there to catch him – steady him.

“I’m here, Hernan.”

“You…” Hernan’s voice rasped. His hands reached out, renewed with super strength. They were free. They were no longer shackled. At times he thought if he pressed them together, his prayers would be answered, but his fingers only found soft, cool skin.

He clutched at it. He wrapped them around the small column and squeezed tightly for it pulled back. It pulled to get away. There was pounding at his hands, his chest, his shoulders, but he didn’t let go. He was never going to let go. Not again. Not…

“H-Hern…”

Hernan opened his eyes.

“K-Kirk!” he sobbed at those red eyes, and the pale face now flushed nearly purple. Tears welled at the corners of his red eyes, while his cheeks were already stained with tears he must have shed prior to this.

Nonetheless, it was a slow build. It bubbled at the rim before breaking free of dark lashes.

‘ _Such red eyes. You have seen them cry, but I wish to see them well up. I want to see the tears slowly build before water tension gives way and they slide down that pretty, pale face.’_

Hernan shook the mocking voice from his head. “No.”

“Hernan!”

“No! No! No!” Hernan cried as his hands squeezed even harder than before until the tears stopped flowing from lifeless eyes.

“No…” Hernan let go. “No, y-you’re not him.” _‘You’re not real!’_

Though his fingers came to gently brush back the dark hair from the reddened face, and outlined broken lines across cool lips.

 _‘Kirk…’_ Hernan’s fingers froze upon the hand-shaped bruises that scarred his neck. _‘What have I done…?’_

Hernan pressed his ear against Kirk’s chest. There was no heartbeat. There was no sound but the miniscule, molecular bodies slowing down.

“K-Kirk? Kirk…”

Hernan sat up. Instinctively, he x-rayed the body. He knew Kirk’s body better than anyone else.

It was the same.

It was real.

“Kirk!” Hernan tried to call out to him. He tried to shake him from his frozen state, but it was futile. Like everything else he had ever done, or ever tried to do, it was for naught.

Kirk was gone.

Hernan knew blood stained his hands, but he had not looked at them the way he did now. Nothing looked different. Nothing looked strange, and yet they could not stop shaking.

_‘When one has the power over life and death, he truly becomes a god.’_

No, this was not the work of a god. This was not even the work of a man. It was the product of a monster.

Kirk’s blood stained his hands. He could not rid him of his sin. Hernan had damned him the day they met, and if he could take it back, if he could take it all back – to have never even been born at all – he would. He would.

No one would have to hurt. No one would have to die. No one… No one else had to die.

Hernan found the switch on the wall. The room turned red.

He grabbed the scalpel from before, and ignored the corpse of the dead man lying beside it drained of blood.

After all, no one left the Red Room alive.

Not even him.

 

The End

 

* * *

 

 

I was so scared

And you were never there

Only when I cried

did you come like a ghost

 

I brought my hands up in prayer

Wrapped them around your throat

Squeezed just to feel

To destroy all my fears

But then you were real

You were real

 

What have I done

What have I done to you

 

I was so blinded by rage

Until my hands were stained

Now I can’t get you off my skin

I can’t rid you of my sin

 

You were damned the day we touched

For I loved you way too much

You were slipping through my fingers

And I reached out to grab you

But when I caught you

You were gone

 

What have I done

What have I done to you

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is ComposerofDiscord. I published this fic anonymously because I wanted only those who were searching for something like this to read it. I didn't want someone to get the wrong idea by simply seeing my penname.
> 
> With that being said, I hope the ending wasn't too confusing for you. Kirk does fight back, but Hernan is far too gone to differentiate between reality and his imagination. Then at the very end, it is implied that Kirk kills the man who tortured Hernan. So yes, no one made it out alive. I initially planned that Kirk would save Hernan, but I think I was too hurt at that point, and writing the comfort part or Kirk's struggle to comfort Hernan and Hernan dealing with PTSD was too much for me... Killing them was easier *hides face* 
> 
> Nonetheless, if this is your jam, I hope you enjoyed. I don't think I'll write another. My heart is still hurting. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and take care! 
> 
> P.S. My friend made art inspired by this fic [here](http://sdeeys.tumblr.com/post/179163747867/sunshine-inspired-by-this-anonymous-fic) She was wondering how to kill Hernan and then I devised this plan jokingly, but then took the joke too far XD


End file.
